The rules of B2B marketing have changed. And if your strategy hasn’t changed with them, you’re becoming invisible to exactly the buyers you’re trying to reach.
Here’s what’s happening: B2B buyers (procurement officers, IT directors, and executives making significant-dollar purchasing decisions) are increasingly bypassing Google altogether. Instead, they’re turning to AI assistants like ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Microsoft Copilot to research vendors, compare options, and build shortlists.
This isn’t a future trend to prepare for. It’s happening right now.
The New B2B Discovery Landscape
Recent research paints a compelling picture. According to Forrester’s Buyers’ Journey Survey, approximately 90% of B2B buyers now use generative AI tools in their purchasing process, with half starting their buying journey in an AI chatbot instead of Google Search.
Here’s the concerning part for businesses still focused on traditional marketing: only five brands typically appear in 80% of top responses delivered by AI agents across any given B2B category. Supplier visibility has become binary. Either AI recommends you, or you’re not found at all.
The implications are significant. When a procurement manager asks ChatGPT for “three CRM solutions for a healthcare organisation that work on tablets,” the AI doesn’t return a page of blue links to click through. It provides a synthesised shortlist with explanations, comparisons, and recommendations. If your business isn’t on that shortlist, you’ve been eliminated from consideration before anyone at your company even knew there was an opportunity.
Why This Matters More Than Traditional SEO
For years, traditional SEO was a relatively well-understood game. Optimise for keywords, build backlinks, and compete for positions on search engine results pages. The rules evolved constantly, but the fundamentals were clear.
AI-powered search operates differently. Large language models don’t rank pages. They synthesise information from multiple sources to construct answers. They prioritise authority, credibility, and structured information over keyword density. And they can recommend or ignore vendors without any click happening at all.
This creates a problem that traditional metrics can’t capture. Your SEO dashboard might show green across the board while your visibility to AI-powered search steadily declines. This is happening right now, in what analysts call the “Dark Funnel,” where research happens in AI conversations that never appear in your analytics.
The opportunity here is substantial. Sales conversions driven by ChatGPT recommendations have reportedly increased by 436%. Buyers who discover vendors through AI arrive more informed, more qualified, and further along in their decision-making process. But the risk for businesses that don’t adapt is equally significant: becoming invisible to modern procurement.
AI can recommend or ignore vendors without any click happening at all.
What AI Search Means for Your Content Strategy
This shift demands a rethinking of how we create and structure content. It’s not enough to write for humans or optimise for algorithms. We now need to create content that AI systems will cite, recommend, and surface to buyers.
Several principles emerge from understanding how AI evaluates and presents information:
- Authority matters more than ever. AI systems weight sources based on perceived expertise and trustworthiness. Content from established industry voices, backed by data and credentials, gets cited more frequently than generic marketing material.
- Structure enables discovery. AI systems favour content they can easily parse and extract answers from. Clear headings, direct answers to specific questions, and well-organised information make it easier for AI to understand and cite your content. Schema markup and structured data aren’t just technical SEO. They’re how you communicate with AI systems.
- Context and relationships build credibility. Being mentioned across multiple trusted sources reinforces your authority. Reviews, industry mentions, and citations in respected publications signal to AI systems that your business is worth recommending. The web of relationships around your brand matters as much as your own content.
- Conversational content converts. Buyers are asking AI questions in natural language. “What’s the best project management software for remote construction teams?” is a very different query than the keyword-focused searches we’ve optimised for in the past. Content that directly answers these conversational queries, in the way a trusted advisor would, performs better in AI contexts.
Your expertise needs to be demonstrable, not just claimed.
Practical Steps Forward
The businesses seeing success in AI-driven discovery aren’t abandoning their existing marketing efforts. They’re extending them to encompass how modern buyers actually find information.
Start by understanding your current AI visibility. Ask ChatGPT, Perplexity, and other AI tools the questions your buyers would ask. See which competitors appear in recommendations. This baseline assessment often reveals gaps that traditional SEO audits miss entirely.
Consider how your content answers questions versus targets keywords. Comparison pages, detailed use-case documentation, and direct answers to common buyer questions tend to perform well in AI contexts. FAQ content structured around real buyer questions (not just keyword variations) gives AI systems extractable answers to cite.
Build content that’s worth citing. Original research, proprietary frameworks, and distinctive perspectives on industry challenges give AI systems unique material to reference. If your content looks and sounds like every other vendor in your space, there’s no reason for AI to cite you specifically.
Ensure consistency across platforms. AI systems assess authority partly through entity recognition, understanding that your business is the same entity mentioned across your website, LinkedIn, industry directories, and third-party reviews. Inconsistent information fragments your digital identity and dilutes your authority signals.
Finally, remember that AI discovery complements rather than replaces human connection. Buyers using AI arrive better informed and with clearer expectations. This actually elevates the importance of human expertise in later stages of the buying journey, when proof, nuance, and relationships matter most.
The Competitive Window
The businesses optimising for AI discovery now are establishing positions that will become increasingly difficult to displace. Authority compounds over time, and early movers in any category are building the credibility signals that AI systems will continue to weigh in future recommendations.
Search behaviour doesn’t change gradually. It shifts rapidly once adoption reaches critical mass. We’re at that inflection point now in B2B purchasing. The proportion of senior decision-makers already using AI tools in procurement isn’t an early-adopter segment. It’s the mainstream.
The question isn’t whether your buyers will use AI to research vendors. They already are. The question is whether they’ll find you when they do.
